Cruisin with the Real"s

Loma Linda Medical Center

Sunday, November 18, 2007

Friday was a full day at Loma Linda. I had 4 appt's that I ran from one to the next. The first and freakiest was a cardiac echo stress test. Maybe some of you have had one. I have had an echo but not the stress part. It took about 1.5 hours total. First they did the regular echo, then about 3 nurses joined the 2 echo techs along with 2 cardiac Dr's (I think they were interns) and the big chesse Cardiologist. There were 7 people and me in this small room filled with machines and me on the table. If you ever have to have this done ask them to explain a little better as to what to expect. They kind of skipped that part.

Basically they inject drugs mostly atropine into your drip line to put your heart under stress like you are excersizing but you aren't moving while they closely monitor all your vitals and take picturs with the echo machine. They keep increasing your heart rate until you feel like it is going to beat so hard it will pop. My head started hurting badly and I thought I would be sick. All the while they are talking to each other about the images and telling the nurses to take it up a notch more cause I wasn't *quite there* yet!

I wasn't quite expecting my body to feel this way and I was telling them *you know my blood pressure and heaart rate are NORMALLY extremely LOW...are you SURE you want to take it HIGHER????? Well, they didn't really care what I wanted THEY wanted it higher....and they got their way....

Then they give you some more drugs to bring it back to normal...

GEEZ....on to my next appt....

After that I had a date with the nutritionist, my coordinator and on to the Pulmonary Lab to get in a pod and breathe and pant and hold my breath,,,,,etc, etc.no big deal..I was supposed to get a sonogram also but we rescheduled that.

Both the cardiac and pulmonary said they saw some issues but didn't go into much detail and said they needed to do go over them with the appropriate people and I would get my results later...

Both are very important that I pass as either one can kick me out of the running with my quest to get *on the list*...

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